A saying came to me this morning that seemed strange, but true. It seems illogical but somehow makes good holy sense. It goes like this:
"Everybody deserves mercy . . .
whether they deserve it or not."
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Today in Women Who Kill, we were discussing the play Death and the Maiden. The protagonist was, 15 years previous, tortured and raped for 2 months, blindfolded. In the play, the woman’s rapist enters her house as a guest of her husband (they don’t know it is him, until she recognizes his voice and mannerisms).
ReplyDeleteWe got to talking in class about revenge, and what would be an appropriate way for her to get her revenge on the man that ruined her life. Revenge has come up a lot throughout the semester in this class, unsurprisingly, but the concept of it struck me especially today. I was bothered that some of my classmates seemed so certain that she SHOULD have revenge… some thought maybe she should torture him, or even kill him (of course, it is a fictional story – perhaps they’d think differently if it was real life… and in the play she neither tortures nor kills him… just ties him up and threatens torture until he confesses). The idea of revenge bothers me, and I just sat there in class trying to figure out WHY she should have revenge, trying to justify it in some way. What good she would get from it? Would it really give her any kind of piece or mind or closure? …and that’s only considering HER, not the rest of humanity or moral issues involved. In her position, I just don’t see how I would get any piece of mind from killing him, and could in no way justify torture or murder (unless perhaps he was running around torturing and raping people left and right, which he wasn’t). Something seems terribly wrong with getting revenge on your torturer by torturing him! Sure, it’s poetic justice, but how can a person feel okay about someone committing the very offense that ruined their life??
I guess I was thinking right along the lines of: “everybody deserves mercy… whether they deserve it or not." I wonder what the class reaction would have been, if I had voiced my thoughts. I can't help but think that a general response would be that to NOT get revenge would be to let him "win." But I don't see that a man who tortures and rapes another human being is winning anything.
I couldn’t believe that so many seemed to go by “an eye for an eye." I don’t have sympathy for a torturer and rapist, but I certainly have enough respect for life and humanity to know it is not my place (or desire) to take any living being’s life. I guess I believe more in mercy than justice. And I was disturbed so few of my classmates seemed to agree.
P.S. It's a pretty good play and a very quick read - I'd recommend it.
I just now discovered your comment. I have thought so much about mercy and justice, and have come to the conclusion as a matter of faith that mercy is God's peculiar form of justice. It is the strange way that God chooses to bring about justice: which from the perspective of faith means reconciliation, wholeness, a way of making things right.
ReplyDeleteWhen I had finished my previous post, where I had concluded that maybe everybody does get what they deserve, I was left with something unfinished in my heart. I was particularly mad at someone in one of my vocations and had sort of let them have it verbally (which is a very uncommon thing for me). My heart was set against them for a couple of days, but that all passed away as I thought: "everybody deserves mercy, whether they deserve it or not." And, then I began to feel whole again. I don't know whether anything can bring wholeness again to certain situations of suffering and wrong. I do feel real certain that the infliction of pain on another never brings wholeness.